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Sacred Heart University DigitalCommons@SHU Mission and Catholic Identity Publications Office of Mission and Catholic Identity 2004 Defined yb Spirituality? Michael W. Higgins Sacred Heart University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/mission_pub Part of the Catholic Studies Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Higgins, Michael W. "Defined by Spirituality?" The iddeH n Pierre Elliott rT udeau: The aithF Behind the Politics. Ed. John English, Richard Gwyn, and P. Whitney Lackenbauer. Ottawa: Novalis, 2004. ISBN 9782895075509 This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Office of Mission and Catholic Identity at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mission and Catholic Identity Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Defined by Spirituality? Michael W. Higgins Before we set out on our journey to discover something about the spiritual pilgrimage of Rerre Elliott Trudeau, it is helpful to set the context. In Canada, unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, we do not like to talk about religion and public life. It makes us uncomfortable. A perfect illustration of this unhappy truism can be seen in the^ recent portrait tl^at appeared in The Globe and Mail by Doug Saunders on the life and leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair.' In this otheiwise informative and ipsightful piece on Prime Minister Blair, Mr. Sauhders manages to avoid any - partial, allusive, or even exotic - reference to the quite considerable role that feligious conviction plays in the life of England’s current prime minister. In an interesting piece in the June 2003 issue of Vanity Fair entitled “Blair’s Big Gahible,”^ David Margoiick provides an illuminating profile of Blair and his relationship with President George W. Bush that pays considerable attention to the role of religion in the makeup of both these influential politicians. "Canadian skittishness - at least that of the media - oh*raising issues of faith, spirituality, religious conviction,^ and philosophical tenets in relation to public leadership stands in sh^ip contrast to the open season religion provides U.S. and British journalists. Jim Wallis, an American activist and writer, puts the case very well in his “Should Joe Lieberman Keep Jlis Faith to Himself?”: Secular fundamentalists make a fundamental mistake. They be­ lieve that the separation of church and state ought to mean the separation of faith from politicSr While it is true that some conser­ vative religionists might want to blur the .boundaries between 21 The Hidden Pierre Eliiott Trudeau church and state, most advocates of religious values in the public square, like Lieberman, do not. Most of us don’t support state- or school-sanctioned prayer in public schools, nor officially backed prayers at high school football games in Texas. Yet open talk of how a candidate’s faith shapes his or her political values should be viewed as a positive thing - it is as relevant and appropriate as many other facts aboUt a politician’s background, convictions, and experience for public office. The more talk about values the better in political campaigns and, as Joe Lieberman has pointed out, religion is a primary source of values for many Americans. Clearly, minority religions and non-religious people must always be respected and protected in our nation. But the core commitments of religious liberty need not be compromised by an open discussion of faith in public life. Indeed, the kind of talk about religion and politics Lieberman has sparked in this election campaign represents, according to columnist E. J. Dionne* “not 'a threat to religious liberty but its triumph.’’^ What is true for Americans in this regard is also true for Canadians. Talk about religion and politics in the public forupi is neither sectarian nor partisan nor a source of intolerance and root cquse for persecution. It is a guarantor of liberty for all our citizens. The role, then, of spirituality and faith in the making of Pierre Elliott Trudeau is entirely appropriate for public consideration and digestion. Why should it be otherwise? In my view, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a man of intense, intelligent, and reflective faith, and this critical dimension of the man needs to be rightly considered when assessing his role and impact on Canadian society. His funeral liturgy was conducted -with great grace by all the princi­ pal players and presided over by Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, the cardinal archbishop of Montreal, with sensitivity and dignity. The homilist. Father Jean-Guy Dubuc, carefully composed and delivered his homily with genuine feeling. The readings were judiciously chosen, the choir in fine form, and the artful alternation between post-Second Vatican Council liturgical practice and form with pre-Secgnd Vatican Council hymnody and chant provided ap exquisite portrait of Trudeau’s aesthetic and spiritual leanings. Ontario critic and television personality Ian Brown, however, ob­ served that the “service droned on. That’s how the Catholic fathers do it; they prevent you from feeling any grief by boring you unconscious.” Ouch! This is altogether rather precious when you consider that it emanates from one inclined to sermonize at will. 22 Defined by Spirituality? But more serious still was a column by that otherwise reliably informed and intelligent critic of national and personal quirks and quandaries, Margaret Wente of The Globe and Mail. Her “Counterpoint” column about Trudeau the father and lover was insightful and well- crafted, but her subsequent column on the memorial celebrations and ' funeral mass amounted to a shocking disclosure of ignorance. In one instance she remarked that “in the days after Mr. Trudeau’s death, he surprised us all over again with what we hadn’t known about him. He surprised us with his bottomless tenderness toward his children and with his religiosity.” Religiosity means excessively or sentimentally religious. Rerre Trudeau “sentimentally religious”? The Jesuit child with an intel­ lectual taste for the rigours of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas sentimental? Wente writes that “it’s unnerving, that faith. It came from a tradition of high-church intellectualism that has almost died out and is almost incomprehensible to worldly children of a secular age like us.” What, pray tell, is “high-church intellectualism”? Is this a new epiphenomenon to be observed in the Catholic world that has succeeded so far in evading the careful scrutiny of Catholic scholars? Or is it, yet once again, a depressing instance of sloppy writing and imperfect understanding of the subject matter? The intellectual and spiritual tradition of which Trudeau was a superb'part is a tradition that embraces a goodly number of the political leaders of our country, admitting the wide range of variations and permutations due to intellect, character, and level of spiritual maturity. Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark, John Turner, Marc Lalonde, and Jean Chretien are just a few of the political notables of the tradition Wente terms “incomprehensible to worldly children of a secular age like us.” To be a religious thinker does not mean that one is inclined to religiosity. Quite the contrary. To be a man or woman of faith in a secular age may well be far less the minority experience that dogmatic secularists believe it to be. Tfie faith of Pienre Elliott Trudeau was constitutive of his very self-definition, of his very meaning as a -human beipg, of his vocation as a father and national leader. The faith of Renre, Elliott Trudeau was private in its intensity but public in its expression. The final mass was not a convention for him, not an aesthetic experiment, a churchly tradition required by protocol. It was,at the core of the man, and he applied to his faith that same level of passion and logic that so many of us have come to admire in other spheres of his public life. Trudeau’s spirituality was as much a part of the legacy as all his other accomplishments; to-miss that simple point is to diminish him and ourselves. 23 The Hidden Pierre Eliiott Trudeau In a recent article by Vancouver reporter Rod Mickleburgh on the recovery of Mike Harcourt, the former B.C. premier whose near-fatal fall at his beach cottage left him potentially paralyzed for life, Mickleburgh writes; “The ordeal, and the flood of prayers that were said on his behalf, have strengthened a part of Mr. Harcourt that he rarely talks about - spirituality. Tm not a great supporter of organized religion because, too often, people don’t practise what they preach,’ he said. ‘But I’ve always been spiritual.’’^ This dichotomy - religion vs. spirituality - is, in my view, a false one. There is no surprise in Mike Harcourt’s reflections; they are undoubtedly sincere and speak authentically of his own experience. What is a surprise is that he would use such terms at all, that a national newspaper known during the William Thorsell years as either hostile or indifferent to religion, and that a topic traditionally viewed as verboten in journalistic and political circles in the country, has now become, if not common­ place, certainly acceptable. And so it has become acceptable to have not just an allusion, an utterance, a sound bite, or a talk on Trudeau and spirituality, but indeed a whole conference. Historians, religious studies scholars, political scien­ tists, sociologists, and theologians will have much to chew on as they try and figure out why Canada is doing what has long been acceptable in the U.K., the U.S., and Australia: examine in the media the faith convictions, traditions, and spirituality of public figures. Trudeau and his contemporaries were “puck shy” when it came to religion and public life.

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